A novel strain of Leishmania braziliensis harbors not a toti- but a bunyavirus.

Leishmania is a genus of the family Trypanosomatidae that unites obligatory parasitic flagellates causing a variety of vector-borne diseases collectively called leishmaniasis. The symptoms range from relatively innocuous skin lesions to complete failures of visceral organs. The disease is exacerbate...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Alexei Yu Kostygov, Danyil Grybchuk, Senne Heeren, Evgeny S Gerasimov, Donnamae Klocek, Aditya Reddy, Jovana Sádlová, Lenka Pacáková, Alain Kohl, František Stejskal, Petr Volf, Jean-Claude Dujardin, Vyacheslav Yurchenko
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2024-12-01
Series:PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0012767
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Leishmania is a genus of the family Trypanosomatidae that unites obligatory parasitic flagellates causing a variety of vector-borne diseases collectively called leishmaniasis. The symptoms range from relatively innocuous skin lesions to complete failures of visceral organs. The disease is exacerbated if a parasite harbors Leishmania RNA viruses (LRVs) of the family Pseudototiviridae. Screening a novel isolate of L. braziliensis, we revealed that it possesses not a toti-, but a bunyavirus of the family Leishbuviridae. To the best of our knowledge, this is a very first discovery of a bunyavirus infecting a representative of the Leishmania subgenus Viannia. We suggest that these viruses may serve as potential factors of virulence in American leishmaniasis and encourage researchers to test leishmanial strains for the presence of not only LRVs, but also other RNA viruses.
ISSN:1935-2727
1935-2735